On Mechanus
by Cupro the Dragon
Summary: A robot murderer created to kill a murderer. A cyborg that believes himself to be righteous, but is really out for revenge. And two worlds that are vastly different, in a bad way. What could possibly go wrong?
1. Chapter 1 - What is Normal?

Chapter 1 - What is Normal?

**I decided to publish this early. Lucky you!**

**This story is the origin story of Pyrox and is from his point of view. Pyrox is not mine and belongs to Hiccup2484. Confusingly enough, this happens before and after the Ætherplane trilogy.**

**If you want to use Pyrox or The Frost Beast in your Dungeons & Dragons campaigns, I have put a link to a Pyrox stat block and a Frost Beast stat block on my profile page for your convenience.**

**Background info: This is an alternate universe (the original one) where the heroes of the Ætherplane trilogy have suffered an even more crushing defeat. Only a few dozen people survived the First Battle. King Aklimon died of illness. Pyrox wasn't there to save Ember and Spyro. The Frost Beast wasn't there to fight Pyrox, either. The villains all survived and are looking for the last survivors to eliminate them. In this universe, I (Cupro) have died, Blade is trapped, and Lightning has disappeared. Demku appeared at the end of the First Battle, creating a shield and sacrificing himself so the heroes could escape.**

**All characters after the first three paragraphs belong to Hiccup2484. The third chapter to his _Pilot_ is coming out soon!**

Cracking through the eggshell was harder than I thought. Or was it? Had I thought before? Were thoughts the things that I'm having right now? The walls fell out from under my talons, and I fell out onto dirt. Two dragons were looking at me lovingly. My parents. One was red and black, and was covered with bleeding cuts, but she radiated love. My mother. One was purple and copper and looked a lot less hurt, and was ready to fight for my life. My father. I awkwardly climbed up to them. "He looks so cute," my mother said. "Let's name him Pyrox."

I became aware of two roundish objects behind me when they started cracking. A dragon about my size - wait, there was this thing called size? Cool! I wanna get really big! - cracked through and crawled up to us. My brother. He was purple with red underscales, bright orange wing membranes, green eyes, and copper horns. I jumped on him and started playing with him. My parents started laughing. I had made them happy somehow. The third egg cracked and another dragon - my other brother - came out. He was dark blue with light blue underscales and wing membranes. His eyes were dark blue and electric sparks jumped off of him and back on. My mother blinked several times as if mildly surprised, and scooped him up and hugged him. He chirruped, and my mother put him down near us. "We should name them Inferno and Electro," my father said. My mother snorted at this, but gave no contradiction.

The roof of the house was torn off and a huge golden dragon threw something black, long, and sharp at my mother. It went through her chest, and the world started to disintegrate. The gold dragon then cast a spell. My father's insides came out of his mouth and were stomped on by the gold dragon. My parents went still, and a sense of dismay filled my body as my vision turned to black.

XXXXXXXXXX

When I woke up, a landscape of gears spread before me, as far as the eye could see. Modrons were walking and flying all over the place, doing their jobs. This world was Mechanus, the ultimate plane of law and order. I turned around, and behind me was a crackling, sparking, seemingly unstable portal to a lush land. I walked through it, and I decided that I preferred this place. I pounced on a brown furry thing (I later found out it was a squirrel) and ate it.

So, fast-forward fifteen years, nothing remarkable, just hunting, collecting, and going through the portal from time to time. I came to learn the language of the modrons. As I got older, I spontaneously began to understand the language - Common - that most people used and Draconic, the language of the dragons, as well. (Don't ask how, I just magically learned them.)

Then, a month and a half before my sixteenth birthday, I accidentally bumped a tridrone, and it attacked me. It managed to take a chunk of my left shoulder out with one attack, and I punched it and it shattered into several pieces, all of which disintegrated. A nearby duodrone morphed into a tridrone in a flash of light, and I was glad that nobody saw this fight. I saw that the tridrone had damaged the gear that it had landed and broke on. Now, Mechanus, as the plane of order, would not like a damaged gear, and that was when I got the idea to be a scrap collector. I dislodged the gear with a feat of brute strength that I have yet to reaccomplish. I walked through the portal and almost ran into a party of adventurers. "Whoa, sorry!" I said and stepped back. One of the adventurers, a dwarf cleric, asked me, "Are you the guardian of his portal?"

I responded, "No, I just live here. This portal doesn't have a guardian. If you want to go through it, I could show you around, for the right price, of course."

"What would this price be?" asked a tiefling rogue, who was near the back.

I looked around. There were five people. "Would this price include protection?" I asked.

The human fighter at the front immediately said, "No." The cleric called them to huddle. I could hear things like, "We should..." and "We can survive on our own." I also heard the rogue say, "If he dies protecting us, we don't have to pay him." The cleric said, "If he dies protecting us, we could get lost."

The party dispersed and the fighter said, "Yes."

I said, "100 gold pieces." The human groaned and pulled the money out and gave it to me. I started to walk towards the portal, and my wound stung. I had forgotten that I had just been injured. I ignored it, and asked the adventurers what they wanted to see. "We need to go to the Great Modron Cathedral," one of them said.

I led them in the general direction, and in eight hours, the party stopped to rest and sleep. I took advantage of this and flew to a nearby pentadrone and said, "Primus has sent me to tell you that the tiefling is evil and needs to be eliminated as efficiently, as soon, and as quietly as possible." The pentadrone nodded and sent all of the nearby modrons towards the sleeping party.

The modrons attacked the rogue. A javelin hit the tiefling in the chest, and an army of monodrones stabbed the tiefling with daggers. The tiefling jerked awake and died. All of this happened in a perfectly synchronized two seconds.

I took what was left: a javelin, two arrows, five daggers, a hand crossbow, and 300 gold pieces, and I took the wizard's spellbook just to be safe. I flew towards the portal, and once I was a safe distance away from the adventurers, I collapsed and opened the spellbook. It had a whole bunch of weird runes and a few words in Draconic. I experimented with the spells inside, but I could only master one: a spell for telekinesis. As I attempted to read the last one, a spell for teleportation, I was hit by a psychic blast and teleported to right in front of the portal. _No way am I doing that again,_ I thought.

I checked for the spellbook, but it hadn't teleported with me. Everything else that I was carrying had. _Well, that's that._ I walked through it, and fell asleep next to the gear I had taken.

When I woke up, I found that my wound had scabbed over, but that it stung like crazy whenever I moved. I decided to go to a nearby town and try to find a healer. I flew up, higher than I had ever flown before, and just managed to see a town behind the mountains. I soared over the plain, over a marsh, and over mountains before I got to it. I looked for a hospital and found one. I flew down and went in. When I walked in, some people looked at me with something that wasn't quite recognition, but close to it, and chased me out.

The people in the street ran away from me into their houses. They came back out with torches and pitchforks. _I thought that was how you were supposed to react to a werewolf, but okay. I guess I'm taking this town down._ I snarled, and smoke curled out of my mouth. Fire came out of it at the townspeople, and they backed away slightly. _I can breathe fire? Cool!_ The townspeople charged, and I fought them with my claws, my teeth, and my fire. I blasted fire at the initial charge, and the few that were still brave or stupid enough - I'm not sure which - to attack me did so. I slashed at the first person with my claws. The next stabbed me in my injured shoulder. I chomped down on his arm and blasted it right off with my fire breath. I threw him into the rest of the people, knocking them down like bowling pins. I finished them off with a fire blast.

I took some items from the houses and burned the town to the ground. _This is my righteous revenge._ In the last building, I found an anvil. _Huh. I wonder..._ I mentally commanded it to teleport to my home. It vanished.

I flew back home. The anvil was sitting there unscathed, and I pulled out the things I had..."inherited." There was a set of smith's tools, some spray paint, some tools I could use to build mechanical objects, and a few old books, mostly lore related to magic, but there were a few other topics, too. I had one on smithing items, one on machine building, and a blank book that seemed special somehow. I had also...retrieved...a stack of scrolls with spells written on them. First, I studied the book on blacksmithing and practiced. When I was sure I had gotten it right, I did something I would hate myself for. I made a bronze shoulder, and drove it into my wound. I screamed with pain, and crumpled up. After that, I passed out.

For the next few days, I sat absolutely still, not even getting food or water, to let my shoulder heal around the metal. When I thought it was over, I got up, and my shoulder protested. It hurt with the pain of the eight metal points stabbing my insides. I walked to the nearby stream to get some water. There was a rabbit near the creek, so I caught it and ate it in two bites.

I knew about the way wizards prepared spells, so, even though I was still hungry, I walked back to the clearing. I decided that I would use the blank book as a spellbook, and that decision felt right somehow. I scribed the teleportation and telekinesis spells into the spellbook, along with the spells on the stack of spell scrolls.

I caught some food and decided to take what was left of the town's stuff. I came up with money, a reading lamp, a mirror, several healing potions, lots of paper, and a few tables.

When I got back, I decided to alter how I kept my things in case I needed to relocate. I then decided to try to teleport through the portal to see if it worked. The portal flashed, and I got a splitting headache, but not the same kind I got when I first tried it. I saw swirling patterns, gears through a kaleidoscope, raw magic, a white and blue robot dragon, and then my sight broke into two and a half perspectives. I, or the me that felt the most real, sat at the other end of the portal. A second body, of an android, stood up, and I could see a few burned down houses and a small carater under the second me. My third me, I couldn't even tell if I was there or if I was seeing things, but I saw a purple and copper dragon, my father. I instantly knew why I was seeing him. Our worlds were connected somehow, and I was seeing him in the past. He, just like me, was searching for his origins, was lost and confused, and had no idea who his relatives were. I saw him stealing a book, him fighting for good, and his moral dilemmas when he was turned evil.

As suddenly as it appeared, my third perspective disappeared. My second body's perspective faded, but didn't disappear. I mentally commanded it to go search for useful things and return to me. It started moving, so I figured that it worked.

I focused on my main perspective, and soon, my second perspective was reduced to a few mental messages.

Another day passed.

I woke up to a cheery sun. The birds chirped in the golden dawn. The sky breathed life into the leaves of the trees, making them dance with a joyful mood. Streams of fire hit the forest floor, and the butterflies frolicked in the light that they rarely saw. This bright, idyllic scene masked the darkness yet to come.

I pushed myself up, with the worst true headache anyone's ever had. An android was silently standing next to me, and when I noticed him, I jumped. "Were you there the whole ti..." I instantly got a mental message that said, _I am you. Yes._ I arched my back up, and froze. Almost literally. As I raised my head, I saw a silver robot dragon clad in a light sky blue breastplate with white swirls on it. He had a sword at his side and a featureless white mask on his face. He took the mask off, smirked, and said,

"I am The Frost Beast, and I'm here to kill a murderer."


	2. Chapter 2 - Triangulation

Chapter 2 - Triangulation

**Teredan is mine.**

The moment he appeared, I immediately knew he was an enemy. Also, I don't know why, but for some reason (Probably magic. Either that, or a plot convenience invented by the gods.) something clicked in my mind: _Time travel._ I then realized that it would fix a lot of my problems. (Don't we all?) But I had a more pressing matter to deal with.

"Who?" I asked.

I'm pretty sure that that remark simply made him mad. He drew his sword and slashed it down at the spot I was sitting earlier. Was, because I knew it was coming. I jumped up, and rolled under a table, which I then tilted to slide all of the stuff into a sack at the end. The Frost Beast looked around, confused, for a moment, and spotted me. He brought his sword down onto the table, breaking it in two, and pinned me down by my wing, plunging his sword into it, making a huge tear. I started to panic, and my second perspective came back, seeing me and The Frost Beast fight. Having a second set of senses did not help in this chaos. Unless...

I hissed, and breathed fire at The Frost Beast. My android body picked up a sword and attacked him. The Frost Beast pulled his sword out and whipped around, and collapsed. I decided to pack up and leave, in case he reactivated. I took my stuff and ran away. As I left, I heard, "CODE UPDATE!" I did not look back to see what it was.

When I got a considerable distance away, I dropped down, and my android self was already there. I focused on my third perspective to see if I could bring that back, like my second perspective, but I couldn't. My android self was holding armor and a featureless mask made of silver that almost exactly matched The Frost Beast's mask. I spray-painted the mask red and put it on. I then took the armor from him. It reformed in my hands to fit a dragon my size and shape. I decided to put it in a sack for later. I walked and unconsciously looked around me. A hand grabbed me and pulled me into a cave. I instinctively fought back, but a hand went over my mouth and I passed out.

I woke up to darkness. Someone was cooking over a fire. I smelled the food, and remembered that I had barely eaten anything for a day. I skipped over and looked at the fire. It had a boar roasting on a spit over it.

The person next to it was very handsome. He had black hair, a torn white robe, and a gray halo casting gray light, if that was even possible. He smiled, and that was when I realized he had dark gray wings. A silver staff rested in the corner. It had a strange symbol on the end. This was a fallen angel.

The angel said, "Hello, I'm Teredan. What's your name?"

This was such ordinary language that it caught me off guard.

"Uh, I'm Pyrox," I said.

Teredan wasted no time in getting to the point. "How would you like to join a secret organization?"

"What's it called?" I asked.

"That's secret."

"What's it do?"

"Gets revenge, protects its members, gets rich, yadda yadda yadda."

"I'm in!" I said.

"Good," said Teredan. He gave me a rock with a symbol that exactly matched the one on his staff. He said, "Show this to a member, and you can secure aid, or make payments to the organization when you deem it appropriate. If you need to refer to it, call us the Habeas Support."

Having said this, Teredan disappeared in a cloud of smoke, leaving the perfectly cooked boar for me to eat. I shrugged and ate the whole thing. I then thought about time travel.

Time travel! What a novel idea! I could destroy The Frost Beast before he came to destroy me. I could check out how my brothers are doing! I could...

Save my parents.

I vowed to get my revenge on that gold dragon. I made up my mind to make an object that could project me through time.

But first I needed to fix my wing. I decided if things were going to keep going this way, I was going to have a completely robotic body soon, so I decided to do it early. I opened the book on machine building to see if it could help me. It mostly had simple circuitry, fancy clockwork, and large steam machines, but when I got near the end, I saw, in much more messy writing:

Part 2: Advanced Robotics

By Alcoriin

_Hmm, that's very...__convenient__,_ I thought. _Oh, well..._

I flipped through this part - its content was packed together much more than the first part, and it had messy notes written all over it - and found a section labeled "Working Prosthetics."

I looked through it. It included a diagram of bones, muscles, and nerves in several kinds of creatures, how to mimic them, and connect up to existing ones. It showed how to build motors, keep a prosthetic lightweight, and have it run on bodily power. There were some gruesome pictures in there I would not like to see again, but it had the information I needed.

I took a very, very, very strong numbing drug and injected it into my wing joint, cut it off (Have you ever tried repairing a wing?), and replaced it with a robotic bronze one I built while referencing the book, and did the same thing to my other wing (so my two sides would be even, you can't fly with an uneven body), and by the time I was finished, it was night. I went to sleep in the cave.

When I woke up, I saw that someone had left an anvil and forge in the cave. _Well, that's convenient,_ I thought. I walked over there -

and was called by name from the back of the cave by a robotic voice. _Oh boy..._

I grabbed the armor I had gotten and donned it. As I dropped it on my head, it squirmed on, and it seemed to fit me perfectly and was very flexible. _This is made of mithral._ I faced my opponent, The Frost Beast again, and grabbed a sword from my sack. "So," I said. "What have you done lately, Frost Beast?"

He replied, "It's THE Frost Beast, with a capital T. Primus said so. Do not question Primus."

"Okaaay, how do, or rather did, you do?"

"I got a code update. Now shut up and die."

My android self ran to me. The Frost Beast lunged at me. I didn't panic. I kept myself cool and collected, and so I didn't get my second set of senses to confuse me. Instead, I blocked the blow, slashed him, and teleported my two mes out of there.

A crackling portal greeted me. I decided to forge a magic weapon. I referenced my books, which said that an exotic material is needed to craft one. I then found out that my android self, through which was my second perspective, had snagged one of Teredan's feathers, which had fallen off.

_That's convenient,_ I thought. _A bit too convenient. But whatever._

I took the feather and put it on a table. I pulled out some silver and forged it and the feather in lava into a blade that looked wicked enough for revenge, a dark gray, unevenly toothed cleaver that burst into flames on my mental command.

I read a book of lore, and learned of an artifact called "The Gem of Space and Time."

Apparently, it is a very well-known artifact in a location that everyone knows about. The book, though, said that only idiots try to obtain it, as the stone has a curious effect on its surroundings. It twists space and time around it in such ways that no person has made it out alive. (Oh, a few people have made it out dead, though - turning into zombies, marching out, and then spasming and coming back to life with no memory of what happened inside - only that they went inside and failed.)

As I finished it, my android self came back. He had been out hunting and brought back food, which I ate. As I ate, I skimmed the rest of the books, looking for anything interesting. A section about Celestial Stones caught my eye, but I had something else on my mind:

Obtain the Gem of Space and Time and harness its power to travel back in time.


	3. Chapter 3 - Escape From Reality

Chapter 3 - Escape from Reality

**Credit to Randall Munroe for working out the physics around the Gem of Space and Time. It was based on "Neutron Bullet" in his book **_**What If?**_**.**

I finished my food, and said, "Well, we're going to Mount Crystal."

Mount Crystal is the tallest mountain in the world. Over cloud lever, it is made entirely of quartz. A cave near its peak is also the place to find the Gem of Space and Time.

I ran and jumped into the air. I wheeled around in the sky and turned west, toward the mountain, hundreds of miles away. I didn't dare teleport, for several reasons.

A hundred and fifty miles along the way...

I had just stopped for the evening. As I was getting ready to go to bed, I saw The Frost Beast walking determinedly towards me. "What's your deal?" I asked him.

"My deal," The Frost Beast said, "Is that I kill you, because if I do, the other Pyrox will disintegrate."

"You mean the android?" I asked. "Well, why don't you kill him, then?"

"Primus's orders," he said, shaking his head.

"What if I told you that killing me _won't_ make him disintegrate?" I asked.

The Frost Beast's head spun around in circles very quickly. "Error. Error. Error," he said. He collapsed.

_Nice one,_ I heard the android think.

I studied The Frost Beast, and decided to let him live, though I did dump The Frost Beast into a nearby river and watch him go downstream.

I went to bed that night, and went the rest of the way to Mount Crystal without any difficulties. The whole journey took about two weeks.

At the base of Mount Crystal, I looked up into the clouds.

I stretched my arms, and started to fly. My other body started to climb.

I spent a few days or so working up, as this mountain was 7 miles tall. A human would have no chance of getting up there, as the death zone starts at a bit over 5 miles. But I, with a more efficient respiratory system, could manage it.

I got to the top soon enough. I easily located the cave. Maybe it had to do with the fact that it was labeled. It was also the only part of the top of the mountain that wasn't quartz or snow. I regretted that I didn't bring a flag. Wait a second!

I ripped a nearby iceberry bush apart. Iceberry bushes can grow in snow. They were the only kind of plant up here. I ripped one of my sacks into pieces and wrote on one, "Pyrox the dragon was here." and tied it to a stick. I drove my makeshift flag into the snow.

I turned to the cave. A 15-foot metal pole that had, "Take me!" written on it was propped up on the cave wall. I took it and walked inside.

I saw stalactites and stalagmites shrinking, and was confused for a second. But then I realized that the Gem was reversing time here. I ran through into the tunnel as piles of rubble started to form walls and pillars. I came out into a cavern that was turning into a stone room. A torch came up from the ground and lit itself, painting the room in orange light. I saw the Gem on a fancy, hollow glass pedestal. The Gem of Space and Time was a glowing shard of aquamarine.

I walked toward it, and it seemed like I was walking down a slope that was getting steeper, even though I knew the ground wasn't sloped. I stopped, and realized that the Gem was warping space around it to cause a gravitational effect. I stopped at fifteen feet away. I couldn't go closer and risk sliding forwards, and I didn't have much time to retrieve the Gem before the Gem was taken out. (Or, rather, reverse-taken in and vanishing.)

That's when I remembered the pole. I pointed it in the Gem's direction and moved it forward. The pole was pulled through my hands and the end hit the Gem, and I was stuck with the other end. I pulled, and the pole managed to pull the Gem off the pedestal, ripping the top half of the pedestal off and forming a sphere of tiny glass shards around the Gem.

I ran out of the room, which had finished reforming by now, and saw a gargoyle turning its head towards me. I quickly looked behind me, and saw that it was the same as when I came in, and that the glass shards were gone from the Gem. I turned it so the Gem was in front of me, and I ran towards the entrance, and as it passed by the gargoyle, the gargoyle vanished.

When I ran out, the cave was exactly the same as when I entered, and the pole vanished, dropping the Gem into my hand, and I noticed that the gravitational field was gone. (If you were wondering why it was dangerous, a gravitational field that strong would have dislocated my joints and sucked all the blood out of my body.)

In that split second when the Gem touched my hand, I was thrown onto a different plane.

The Gem floated above my head as I groaned, sitting up. I was in some horrendous place, comparable to the Nine Hells. Of course, I thought this before I actually realized it was the Nine Hells. This was Nessus.

I was suddenly attacked by a bunch of lemures, and defeated them easily. I was then sitting on a bunch of soul coins. I don't know why, probably from the lemures. I took them, and stuffed everything I actually needed in my backpack, and put stuff I only wanted in a sack.

I spent the next five minutes trying to command the Gem of Space and Time to take me back, but it didn't work. It did tell me, though, that it had sent me to Nessus three thousand years ago. There was no way that I was going to get back without it.

I sighed, and walked to a city I saw in the distance. There was only one person I knew of who could possibly help me this long ago. Asmodeus. I walked for days. The city was farther away than it looked. When I finally reached it, I walked onto a biggish street with devils of all kinds on it and looked around. I finally understood why it seemed closer. The buildings in the center were miles tall and the city was hundreds of miles across. I walked on.

I walked for a long time and finally reached the center. There was a huge wall, and a huge gate to match. A voice came from the top of it. It said, "What business do you have with the great Asmodeus?"

I yelled up, "I came to strike a deal concerning magic!"

I heard muttering, and the voice said, "You can come in!" and the gate eased open a crack, and I went in. "A crack" for this gate was still very big. An efreeti guided me to a building. I went in, and another efreeti said, "Ahh, Pyrox. Right this way, please." The efreeti walked down a corridor, and I followed. "Asmodeus wants you to be comfortable before he meets you in the morning," he said, and showed me a room. "This is where you will sleep, free of charge."

"Thank you," I said, before realizing he was gone already. I walked in and closed the door. It was like a room in an inn, but much nicer. I was tired, and it was late, so I climbed up on a bed and fell asleep.

I woke the next morning in the black room. I rubbed my eyes, and gathered my things, and started out of my room. The efreeti from last night was behind a desk as I walked by. He stopped me and gave me a map. I took it and thanked him for his kindness as I walked out. I followed the map to the tallest building in the city. I put my hand up to knock, but before I could, the door opened, and a voice said, "Please. Come this way." I walked in, and couldn't see anyone. "Just turn right on the next passage," the voice said.

I thanked the voice, and followed its directions. I walked through a winding passage before coming across a chamber with wraiths standing guard at the door. Asmodeus was sitting in a throne at the end of the room. "Approach," he said.

I walked up and bowed. "My lord," I said.

"Rise," he said. I stood up, and he got up and snapped his fingers, teleporting me and him to another room that was like a glassblower's workshop and a smithy combined.

He held up a gear. He said, "The last surviving piece of the original Primus. It sould help you control the Gem of Space and Time if you were to forge an artifact with it." He handed me the gear.

"Free of charge?" I asked, confused.

Asmodeus said, "You have already paid in full." and teleported away.

_Well, that was ominous,_ I thought.

I looked around. There was a special kind of rock here, and tools for a smith. I shrugged, and then I spent the next several weeks trying to get it right.

I finally did, after a few mishaps that teleported my tools away to who-knows-where-or-when. The finished product was a rounded, not very thick, cylindrical object with one side black and one side clear, and through the clear side you can see a gear, with a sliver of aquamarine floating in its center, with a gold chain to make it into an amulet.

I call it the Planar Amulet.

I touched it and said, "Take me back to the place and time I was in before I was taken here." There was a warping of the world, and I was back on that mountaintop, facing my android self.

I tested the amulet out again, telling it to send me one hundred years back in time and two hundred fifty miles east. I found myself in a village, with several people walking around. I was given plenty of strange looks. I walked around and found a tinkerer's workshop, and looked inside. There were many contraptions inside that interested me. As I looked in, I saw a gnome working inside. He saw me, walked out, and invited me in.

I said, "Nice place you got here."

He said, "I like machines and robots. What's with those wings?"

"They got damaged," I said.

"Can I look at them?" the gnome asked.

"Sure," I said, extending my wings towards him.

He examined them, and said, "These are a marvel of technology. Do you want to be my apprentice?"

"Sure," I said, shrugging.

"What was your name again?" he asked me.

"Pyrox," I said. "What's yours?"

"Alcoriin," he said. _Where have I heard that name before?_

"Anyway," he said. "It's late, and I need to go to bed. Do you have a place to sleep?"

"Yes," I said. It wasn't quite a lie, but I could find a place.

I found a quiet part of the forest and opened to the second part of that book. Yes, Alcoriin wrote that. I flipped through it, and saw, "Dedicated to Pyrox, my wonderful assistant, who without which none of this would be possible."

I smiled. It's nice to know you're going to accomplish something.

Over the next three years, I worked with Alcoriin and tested a few things, mostly by replacing my body parts with bronze robotic ones, with my horns made of tarnished silver. By the end of the three years, I was all robotic except for my vital organs and my face, and a few other places.

One day, I walked into Alcoriin's workshop and said, "I would like to negotiate the end of my apprenticeship."

"I knew you were going to ask about that sooner or later," he said. "When were you thinking?"

"In about a month," I said. My nineteenth birthday was in about a month.

"Okay," he said, and shook my hand.

About a month later...

I waved goodbye and walked down the road, searching for a dungeon I knew was around there somewhere. I found it, but I was promptly beaten up and I ran out. I swore that day that I would do what I needed to do to get what I wanted. I shook my head, and told the Planar Amulet to take me back.

I was on that same mountaintop not one second after I left, even though three years had passed for me. I told the Planar Amulet, "Take us somewhere random." to see what would happen.

I was wrenched out of my reality and driven into the ground...of a floating island. I groaned and got up, realizing that I had somehow gotten my mask scratched and my left horn chopped off in the process.

I took in my surroundings. My android body was gone, and I was in front of a house. The Planar amulet told me I had gone eighteen years, eleven months, and twenty-eight days into the past. A purple and copper dragon opened the front door. He said, "I thought the big surprises were over. Pyrox, what are you doing here?"

"You know me?" I asked, searching my brain for any memory of him.

"Of course I know you," he said. "You've caused a lot of trouble for me and Ember." He laughed.

Right at the start, right there, there was a glimmering of him...

"Are you...my father? And is Ember...my mother?" I asked.

"Yeah, you're the one who told us that, and...wait," he said, some realization dawning on him.

He pushed me and said, "Just take your time machine and get out of here!" he yelled.

I jumped back. "You can at least tell me your name!" I yelled.

"Spyro. Now get out!" he said, pushing me with one hand, and it landed on the Planar Amulet.

I was thrown into the timestream. I saw myself saying something, a bunch of dust, some lightning, legions of robots, and I saw a vision of the Frost Beast so real I wasn't completely sure if it was a vision.

I was left on a cliff with my android self, and without the Amulet. I crawled up onto the edge. I saw a crater below me, with two dragons, one red and black, one purple and copper. My parents.

I swore to protect them at all costs, unless it prevented my own existence. I stared into the sun through my mask, and lashed my tail. I saw my parents walk into the forest, and followed them in, torching a few monsters following them. I smiled and officially started off.

**{insert events of the Ætherplane Trilogy here}**


End file.
